Page 62 of Angel's Conquest

Foolish, Clara. Once again, you are so?—

Bronze’s lids flew open, and he cradled her head with such speed, she nearly fell off the bench. Then his lips were brushing over the shorn side of her scalp, pressing, stroking, kissing every exposed part of her so that she couldn’t help but lean into his strength any way he would offer it, even if it meant acknowledging the most vulnerable part of her.

“Lost?” He ground out the word against the side of her temple. “You want to talk about lost? I almost lost everything today when I realized you were taken. So, forgive me, princess, if my eyes need a moment to catch up to what my heart is still coming to terms with. That you’re here, in my arms, and not bleeding out in a fucking forest where I couldn’t find you.”

A rush of memories flooded back to Clara and mixed with the images of what Bronze must have seen and endured before he’d found her in the woods.

Malik. A lost brother. A male who had bled out in Bronze’s arms. A soul he’d been too late to save.

“Oh, Bronze.”

He nodded stiffly but said nothing, because they’d both understood how today could have ended. What-ifs billowed around the spacious bathroom like unspoken secrets, making the air grow thicker and hotter with the impetus of what they’d dodged and what she could no longer live without.

Clara flung her arms around Bronze and smoothed the rigidity of his stern mouth away with the insistence of her own. Her kiss was open and eager, having no preference for anything other than the taste of Bronze consuming her from the inside out. And thank the Moon Mother, their passion was a language her warrior had no trouble speaking. If words eluded him, then she would declare her heart with the movements of her body.

“Off,” he growled into her mouth, then grabbed her blouse at the shoulder and ripped it down, baring her breast. “I want it all off. I need to see you, to know you’re all right.”

He’d barely finished getting the words out before both their damp clothes had been stripped away in greedy tugs. Then he leaned over her shoulder and flipped on the shower. Steam soon swallowed them in a cocoon of passion, protecting them from anything that wasn’t welcome in their small heated frenzy.

Which was, coincidentally, everything.

“Wait! The relic.” She’d not undone the leather fastening yet, and she wouldn’t risk?—

“Leave it on. You’ve earned it. It’s yours.”

The words weren’t just an insistent request but a reverent plea, even as he lowered his head to worship her breasts. But his devotion was somehow different this time, with the pulse of his cock beating against her inner thigh. Bronze was everywhere, and so was the connection to her people. Two halves of a whole that stitched together perfectly to complement the lycan monarch she always hoped to be one day.

The monarch she now knew had always been within her.

Because of him.

The impulse to see far more of him, to take in all she could of the male, was like a strike beneath her ribs, but she could no sooner lie there than ensure every part of him was cared for. Appreciated. Honored.

Loved.

The last thought tickled the back of Clara’s mind as she pulled away from him, turned her back against the shower’s spray, settled him onto the bench—while absolutely adoring the wrinkle of confusion between his brows—and dropped to her knees.

Chapter 30

Bronze was an immortal fallen angel. A feared sentinel warrior. A being created by the prime mages and lauded for his cunning and cruelty in combating the demon charmers.

And he’d just been plopped on his ass by the woman of his dreams and ordered to sit as if he was—and the irony was not lost on him here—a dog.

“Clara,” he begged. Again—dog. “What are you doing?”

He was waiting for words. Waiting for an audible explanation as to why his princess had gotten to her knees before him and inched her mouth closer to his jutting erection that was so hard it was about to cut a hole in the tile beneath him. Because in what fucking world did he deserve this?

It was a dream. A miracle montage where she was the angel and everything around him was a temptation literal actual Heaven couldn’t touch.

And then her mouth was around him.

“Fuck.”

He lifted his head and tried to focus on the shower spray anointing the curve of her lower back and waterfalling over an ass he’d yet to stop dreaming about. Shit, no. Too much. Already, the suction and swirl of her tongue over his head was pulling him faster toward a curtain call. He shot his gaze to the ceiling, then back at her, then up again, throwing his hands out, bracing his palms against the cool slick tile and then swiping them away because he did not need another reminder of just how slick his current environment was.

“Clara . . . princess . . .” he breathed over a few too many strenuous swallows.

That was when the teasing really started. Slow, yet relentless. Curious, yet miraculously skilled. But it was when she dragged her tongue down the thick vein bulging along the underside of his shaft, then expertly cupped his balls, and squeezed . . .

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